TELEGRAM TO F. Y. KON[1]

Written:Written on May 4, 1920Published:First published in 1965 inCollected Works, Fifth Ed., Vol. 51.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      page372b.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

FelixKonKievCopy to RakovskyKharkov

RegardingVinnichenko we agree in principle. Reach
agreement with Rakovsky on
details.[2]Report briefly on
the military situation and prospects.

[1]Transmittedby direct line.—Ed.

[2]Inthe manuscript of the telegram, the word “details” has been
crossed out and the words “the form of Vinnichenko’s co–
operation in government activities” have been written in an unknown
hand.

Inthe spring of 1920, V. K. Vinnichenko, who was then
living as an emigrant in Vienna, declared that he was breaking
his connections with the Ukrainian Mensheviks and accepting the
platform of the Ukrainian Communist Party. Vinnichenko
requested the Government of the R.S.F.S.R. to allow him to come
to the Ukraine and to give him an opportunity of actively
participating in the struggle against the White Poles and Wrangel, as
well as in building the Soviet Ukraine.

Inview of the fact that Vinnichenko and other nationalist
leaders had the backing of a considerable number of Ukrainian
émigrés, and in order to win away from them elements belonging
to the working people who had been misled, it was decided to
draw Vinnichenko into Soviet work. The question was discussed
several times in the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) and the C.C., C.P.(B.)U.

OnSeptember 6, 1920, by a decision of the Politbureau of
the C.C., C.P.(B.)U. Vinnichenko was admitted to membership
of the Ukrainian Communist Party and appointed Deputy
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and People’s
Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian S.S.R. On the same
day the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) passed the following
decision regarding Vinnichenko: “The Politbureau takes note of
Comrade Vinnichenko’s variable moods and therefore, while not
objecting to his immediate admission into the Party, the
Political Bureau proposes that he should not be given any post, and
should first be tested in practical work.” =

(Collected Works, Fifth
Ed., Vol. 51, p. 424.)

InOctober 1920 Vinnichenko again emigrated abroad.